Sadness prevails as efforts go in vain

Some may take this as silly, lacking in depth, without an awareness of the impoverished world, or perhaps an embracing of material and fleeting pleasures; yet, even with the knowledge that a good cup of coffee is simply a passing fancy, I cannot help but feel sadness tinged with anger at Starbucks for having closed our local establishment.

Four years ago, when Starbucks moved into our community, a mostly blue-collar community ripe with auto parts stores, hardware stores, dollar stores, and farming equipment, I and others recognized the immense value of having the famous chain locate a coffeehouse in our area. Bragging rights abounded, and one could often hear "we have a University, a Walmart, a Home Depot, a movie theater, J.C. Penney, Staples, Chilis, and of course Underwood's Barbecue." This pronouncement would quickly and inevitably be followed with "And we have a Starbucks" as though this concluded the definitive proof of our "arrival" into the 21st century and our demonstration that we are a worthy town with many things to do not to mention strength of culture. In short, there is and has been something rather "classy" about having a Starbucks in town.

But one day, a median showed up in front of the store, having been built overnight by the city for safety reasons. I do not question the need for traffic safety, but we must acknowledge that the median took half the business away from Starbucks due to the inconvenience of having to go around it to frequent the famed coffeehouse. Furthermore, Walgreens decided to move in, resulting in the temporary closing of the road directly behind Starbucks. Suddenly, all was hopeless. Sales plummeted and the customers chose to drive onward rather than dealing with the very difficult situation of traffic flow.

And, in all its bean-counting wisdom, the home company made a decision that Starbucks in Brownwood was no longer worth the effort, was losing money, and closed it. The months preceding the closing were filled with various efforts to prevent the dastardly deed including letters, petitions, calls, anger, pleading, and many emails. But all efforts were in vain, for it did happen. Gone. History. End of story. Kaput. Finished. Of course, there is a good side I suppose, I now save $2 to $4 a day. But, alas, our four years of great coffee and a nice environment replete with soft jazz, nice art, comfortable chairs, good pastries, and mostly insightful conversation is a thing of the past. Obviously all those things are available in different places, including my own office if I so choose, but regardless of the utilitarian viewpoint, I and many others will sorely miss our Starbucks.

So in spite of my immediate bitterness and hurt I share with our community, I cannot help but admit that because of Starbucks I now have many new friends. During our four years together, I became friends with a local physician, police officer, construction worker, businessman, banker, bookseller, and deepened my relationship with a pastor friend. The last four years have been special and not easily forgotten, for as the saying goes, "'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all!"

Which is better? Which is right?

Walking through the streets of Leipzig this past summer, I heard a sound which I knew to be professional musicians playing the music of Robert Schumann. Gravitating toward the sound and navigating through the various shops and people, I found myself standing in front of a group of four street musicians, 3 string players and a clarinet player, dressed in tuxedos with their cases neatly placed behind them and their music stands in front. I stood there several minutes enjoying the mostly art music with one show tune thrown in for fun. They were marvelous musicians, having achieved great skill on their respective instruments, and most certainly having attained some sort of status in the musical world. Their music was beautiful and I was moved by the accuracy, the artistry, and the expression. It was a real treat to hear them and my respect for their musicianship is unbounded. In my small world of musical training, I would give them a 1st division!

The next day we arrived in Berlin, in some ways a more modern and bourgeois city with a greater mix of cultures than Leipzig. Once again, I enjoyed the food, the environment, and the natural blend of art, antiques, and contemporary concepts that pervade the businesses and the people. And again, I heard some music. Yet this time the music was different. It was rough, raw, dance-like, fun, a little out of tune, melodious and tonal, but with an edge and a lack of sophistication. Not unpleasant, nothing offensive, nothing negative, but certainly different from the group I had heard the day before. I quickly found my way to their locale to find a trio comprised of a tuba, saxophone, and a baritone like horn.

Unlike the first group where I preferred to stand several feet back so as not to distract them from their musical goals, with this 2nd group, I moved near them and felt the energy that emanated not only from their instruments but their personalities as well. As they played, without any music in front of them, they caught my eye and smiled. I felt further drawn to them and upon the conclusion of a song we began to communicate. Using poor German, I asked them about the key of the baritone horn. I also let them know I was musician as well. They enjoyed the attempt at the language and I subsequently asked them to play "Chicken Dance." This meant nothing to them and I was quickly frustrated as I tried to translate the words chicken and dance into German. Finally, I started singing the song. They laughed and within 2 measures recognized the song and began to play it.

Their performance was pretty rough, replete with oom-pahs, shakes, missed notes, rhythm problems, and imperfect tuning. Again using my system of examining performance quality, I would give them a 4th division. But I loved every sound and every moment of the music that came from the heart, and I recognized their talent and skill and grew envious of the freedom they portrayed, and the earthy shimmering energy their music offered to those who could hear.

So my questions are: which group is the better group? which group is the most "right" for the cause of music? which group reaches the most people? which group should receive the highest respect? or the most money? which group philosophically will withstand the test of time?

While I am anxious for people's opinions on these difficult and complicated questions, I anticipate hearing some variation of this: each fulfills an important musical niche in the world and each should be valued and respected for what it is. One requires years of training and leans on the introspective, and the other requires a different kind of skill and personality. Both groups need collective and individual courage to perform in front of many people for little monetary gain, and both groups touched me in different ways!

Handel with care

In many ways it is a rather humorous commercial and difficult to refrain from smiling as the large group begins to sing "Hallelujah" from Handel's "Messiah", one of the great and certainly most known works from the Baroque period of music and a popular oratorio often heard during the Christmas season. The story goes that King George, while enjoying the amazing music of Handel, grew weary of sitting that long and stood at the beginning of the chorus titled "Hallelujah" thus causing the audience to respond in kind. Tradition now requires the standing during any singing of this chorus.

Incidentally, as I write this blog, I cannot help but remind the readers that George Frederick Handel(1685-1759) composed this marvelous oratorio in 24 days and it is largely regarded as his greatest work and one of the most significant religious works in the history of music. Unfortunately, as often occurs with music, literature, or art that is so strong as to achieve popularity from the masses as well as garnering respect from experts in the field, "Messiah" and "Hallelujah" chorus in particular has become so common place as to be considered cliched and, sadly, at least to some, almost comical. In the case of the airline commercial, the good news presented results in an outburst of the well-known Handel choral work with the intention of eliciting smiles and joy with the proposed product.

Not intending to be a purist nor to be labeled part of the cultural elite, nor to be awashed in some sort of self-designed, pearl-laden sanctimonious criteria of excellence, nevertheless, it bothers me on several levels that the commercial uses the theme from "Hallelujah" to extol the virtues of its product which in this case happens to be no fees attached to a flight service. I suppose it is more enjoyable to sing "Hallalujah" than simply to cheer or give high fives or jump in excitement or to exclaim the collective happiness of this event, but in truth, I believe it lowers the meaning of Handel's marvelous score, turning it into a commodity to be used for comic relief.

It just seems to me that something should remain true to its form and purpose in this world and of all the pieces of music worthy to honored for its divine inspired brilliance, "Messiah" stands at the top. Furthermore the chorus was composed to honor our Lord, lifting Him above all others and recognizing His status as a deity, the son of God, and as the Savior, for a moment of great joy and exultation.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with celebration and who am I to question the happiness of a group of people at receiving a great bargain. With the current economic condition brought on by escalating fuel costs, it is no surprise that a person would rejoice over any kind of savings or financial benefit. But I posture that "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's "Messiah" is deserving of greater respect than to provide an insidious and most likely evanescent emotion with little to no meaning.

The Media Choice

We arrived in Leipzig, having ridden nearly two hours on a bus from Berlin, checked into the very nice motel, opened the curtains and saw a partially nude and sexually explicit woman on a billboard. I then turned on the television and was shocked to see a lady begin to remove her clothes as she was trying to convince the viewer to buy a particular item. Changing the channel, I found another scene of a couple in a state of loving bliss showing more of themselves than I am accustomed to seeing on television. It all seemed blatantly prurient at the most and inappropriate at the least, and I reminded myself we were no longer in the United States of America, and subsequently began to make typical critical comments about the rampant liberalism of foreign countries, and further began to extol the virtues of our homeland with the proper mixture of arrogance and pride found in many Americans. Oh how great to live in a country where modesty and conservatism are more than ideals but are indeed practiced by most people and where the media does not force us to accept sexual themes.

Frightening, however, is the thought that there is always the likely possibility that the media simply reflects the general culture, and the values of a particular region or country are simply manifested on television. We know that there are more truck commercials displayed during football games and that Saturday morning television is geared for a younger generation, thereby demonstrating media's tendency to analyze, react, then present something new. Using this prescription, it becomes debatable whether or not a billboard is forcing a particular value acceptance on the viewer or if a billboard is more of a representation of given practices of a culture. If the latter is true, then perhaps we should examine our own emphases, our own priorities, and, yes, even our cultural values that exist in our country.

As I was arrogantly extolling the virtues of our country (which are certainly numerous), and reveling in our own self-righteous moral code, proud of our resistance to unbridled media-driven sexuality, it suddenly occurred to me that while we may not allow obvious nudity, we do, instead, frequently or even constantly accept violent images and visual human pain. We may indeed be squelching some sexual concepts at least visibly, and we may expect a kind of social protocol from our media, and we might even demand a family oriented type of visual experience, but, ironically, we are quite comfortable seeing murder, mayhem, destruction, and inflicted pain.

From animation to reality, our emphasis on our television sets is often on violence. German emphasis may be sexuality (at least from our perspective that is--I'm not convinced this is necessarily the reaction from the German people, but that is a subject for another essay!), but we replace that notion with an emphatic stress on violence. I am not prepared to state which country is wiser or which country will end up with fewer problems or which country has the higher crime rate or teen pregnancy (no doubt those statistic are available somewhere). I am prepared to question, however, our propensity for self-righteous attitudes as regards our own so-called protection of our young from nudity as opposed to violence.

Please understand I am not advocating in any sense that we allow or encourage the media to display public nudity on television or billboards. In fact, I often become uncomfortable with the extent of sexual themes encountered everyday on television and in the media. Like most parents, I fear that as cultural morals erode and as our acceptance of sexual behaviors takes on a lower standard, our society will one day suffer the consequences of unrestrained sexual action. Yet, my concern is that we have become desensitized to violent images and violent actions while remaining somewhat morally righteous in other areas. There seems to be an inconsistency in our media driven world that defies logic. So back to the question, does the media direct our value system or does it reflect it?

Whatever the answer to this question may be, there is no doubt in my mind that love in whatever form is always preferable to pain in any form.